THE Enugu State Government has described as misleading, a report claiming that it was yet to implement the national minimum wage law.

In a statement yesterday, the State Commissioner of Information, Chuks Ugwoke stated that, “the report in a national daily was apparently a deliberate effort to embarrass the state government, because Enugu was one of the first states in the country to implement the law.”

According to Ugwuoke, the State Government started implementing the minimum wage in 2011 and added N1,000 to raise the amount to N19,000 while also effecting an increase in the salaries of the cadres of workers not covered by the law.

He stated: “It is really surprising that a reporter residing in Enugu would not know or deliberately chose to ignore the fact that the N18,000 minimum wage law has been implemented in Enugu since 2011.

“The report was deliberate and unprofessional, false, mischievous and downright unprofessional on the part of the reporter, because even if he was in doubt, all he needed to do was to inquire and he would have discovered that no worker in Enugu takes home less than N18,000 per month as prescribed by the law.”

Ugwoke recalled that in August last year, the President of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Comrade Abdulwaheed Ibrahim Omar, during a visit to the state, praised the State Government for its attentiveness to the welfare of workers including the early implementation of the minimum wage.

He pointed out that the NLC President had also acknowledged that initial differences between the parties upon the commencement of the payment of the minimum wage in Enugu had stemmed from a misinterpretation of the law by workers